
Welsbach Question ?
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Welsbach Question ?
by Tony Tripp (tonytr1@hotmail.com)
Posted: Jun. 10, 1999 @ 02:48.
::I know that Welsbach discovered the thorium that makes mantles glow
but most references I find are for gas light mantles. Did Welsbach
produce an oil lamp mantle? Also did Welsbach produce an oil lamp
burner? If so could someone give me a discription of what they look
like?
Thanks,Tony
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On Jun. 10, 1999 @ 21:22, Fil Graff, Guild Secretary (fgraff@comcast.net) wrote:
Tony: Rene [6/11 add: OOPS! It's Carl Auer; Rene was Argand.
Shame on me!] Auer, Count Von Welsbach (a title) discovered the
thorium-cerium mixture that allowed a flexible material to be formed
into a mantle soaked in his brew. If one has a Bunsen (back to chem
lab...the non-illuminating flame found on a lab burner; you know,
BLUE) flame, it matters not where the flame comes from, be it city
gas, kerosene vapor, gasoline vapor, alcohol vapor...whatever. The
Bunsen flame is what is hot enough to cause the chemicals in the
mantle to incandesce (not BURN, but produce radiant light). So a
mantle is a mantle, so to speak. Most "gas" lamps used a rigid
mantle, as they operated at relatively low fuel pressure. Same with a
kerosene wick lamp...low fuel pressure, so rigid mantle. Pressure
lamps (like the Coleman), whether gasoline/petrol or
kerosene/paraffin use soft ("rag") mantles, as the fuel pressure
would blow a rigid mantle apart. Don't get the man Welsbach and
the several companies that used his name mixed up. "The Welsbach Co."
in the US was in the gas lighting business. It eventually split into
two companies, one making fixtures and such, the other making
mantles. The mantle company was eventually purchased by Lindsay
Lighting Co (later Lindsay Lighting and Chemical Co.), and moved fron
Glochester, NJ to West Chicago, ILL. Still operating with the
Welsbach brand, they made mantles under licence from Aladdin, and
apparently DID sell a pressure lamp they purchased from Coleman.
Welsbach-London sold the very first replacement kerosene mantle
burner, the (unsuccessful) "ERA" in ca. 1899. There is a picture of
the ERA burner on the cover of a recent LIGHT INTERNATIONAL, the
Guild magazine. I have been trying to get the only example we know of
(borrowed...not mine!) burning for some weeks, and gave up because
the darn thing gets so hot I'm afraid it will go into melt-down! We
have a rather intense international effort going on now trying to
track down the details of this burner and the UK company that
Patented and sold it (we think it was actually made in Germany). 1898
UK Patent, 1899 US Patent, Company existed 1899 to 1903. :: Fil ::
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On Jun. 10, 1999 @ 22:47, Tony Tripp (tonytr1@hotmail.com) wrote:
Fil, Thanks for all the good information, you are a living textbook
for lampers. I'll try to get a copy of the L.I. magazine. Im saveing
your post to my lamp folder on the desktop.I hope you can get the
burner working properly, does it have some sort of metal cage
surrounding the mantle that is heating up? Thanks,
Tony
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On Jun. 11, 1999 @ 19:15, Fil Graff (fgraff@comcast.net) wrote:
Tony: It's not the mantle that's heating up, it's the metal of the
burner itself. This burner concept was a pretty radical idea at the
time, and dreams of riches may have run away before all the nuts and
bolts of complete development were in place. As this is a "oner"
complete burner as far as we know, it is too important an artifact to
mess around with trying to get it to work as we'd expect an early
Aladdin to work! Getting rid of the heat build-up was quite a
challenge to all the early burner makes, particularly these hearty
pioneeer working with a mantle that incandesces at about 1600 to 2000
deg.F! The ERA seems to be too heavily cast, and has too small an air
flow to dissipate heat well. The problem was solved by other makers
within a couple of years, because the Fellboelin, the Praktikus, the
Index, the Aida and the Kronos were all available by 1910, and the
Aladdin Model 1 came in 1908. They all get hotter than modern
burners, but not so bad the wick knob becomes untouchable as on the
ERA sample I tested! :: Fil
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On Jun. 11, 1999 @ 14:26, John in England (sirjohnclay@aol.com) wrote:
The mantle saga began in 1828 when Berzalius descovered the mineral
known as "Thorite" from which thorium nitrate evolved. The next link
in the chain of cause and effect was forged when Fox-talbot
discovered that incandescent ash produced light when a flame was
applied in his laboratory around 1835. It was not until 1886 when Dr,
Carl Auer (Welsbach) filed his first mantle patent, and that was
after his professor's invention, (Dr. Bunsen and his burner) was used
to incandesce Auer's early mix of thorium nitrate and several of
different compounds (including lanthium, uranium etc)- until cerium
eventually was used at around 1%. A long and complex invention the
mantle was, covered amply in Light International vol 1 - # 1, Hope
this goes some way to answering your question.
Archbishop.